Ik begin met de volgende twee voorbeelden van Nederlands racisme:
The Netherlands knows a long history of depicting black people in racialised and gendered ways. The cartoon published in Metro is part of a larger debate on undocumented people, race and the power of the media.
Groenhuijsen eagerly makes use of the widespread idea that Black humanity is dependent on white goodwill. He states: '[…] young black Americans: you don’t need to impregnate 16 year old girls because your grandmother sat in the back of the bus. You don’t need to shoot and kill fellow blacks because there was once slavery […] Of course black lives are of value. But why do Black Americans kill each other so often (more than 40 deaths a week)? When compared to whites, the number of African American killers is seven times as high. Doesn’t your battle cry count in those cases? Why isn’t there a black leader standing up to yell “Yes, all black lives matter” for every black murder victim? […] Obama is the best possible ally of black Amerika. But don’t expect a black president to solve just solve all problems for you.'
The aim of the translations we offer here is not to reproduce his racist and violent words, but to hold Groenhuijsen and Dutch media responsible and call them out on their racist propaganda. Dutch media needs to face their daily reproduction of whiteness plus answer for it on both a national and an international level. It is utter cowardice to write such bold, anti-Black statements about a movement but do so in a way in which the changes of a response are slim to none. Did Groenhuijsen approach any American media in an attempt to sell his Dutch views on the Black Lives Matter movement? If Groenhuijsen is serious, or at least sincere, about the advice he wants to offer Black America, why did he choose this rather inaccessible form? Could it be that, not quit unlike a growing group of white liberals/progressives/saviors/etc.
Wikipedia meldt ondermeer het volgende over de 61-jarige, in een katholiek milieu geboren babyboomer,
Carolus Johannes Franciscus (Charles) Groenhuijsen… Groenhuijsen is woonachtig in Bethesda (Maryland), net buiten Washington D.C... Hij is getrouwd en heeft drie kinderen.
23 januari 1999 - Aan Groenhuijsen werd de tweejaarlijkse Professor Herman Wekker Prijs uitgereikt. De prijs was hem toegekend wegens zijn gave om 'allerlei aspecten van de VS, van de structuur van het staatsbestel tot en met de aard van het dagelijkse leven op straat en in de supermarkt, voor de Nederlandse kijker begrijpelijk, ja zelfs voelbaar te maken.'
• 2003 - Groenhuijsen werd genomineerd voor de onderscheiding 'Beste Omroepman van het Jaar.'
• 2006 - Bij het 50-jarig jubileum van het NOS Journaal kozen de kijkers van het Journaal Groenhuijsen als de 'Beste Correspondent' die de nieuwsrubriek ooit had.
Deze drie eervolle onderscheidingen zijn vooral zo veelzeggend omdat ze demonstreren wat en wie de mainstream-Nederlander waardeert, en wat binnen het raamwerk van het poldermodel het begrip 'voelbaar' betekent. Groenhuijsen's 'poging' het 'racisme' te 'nuanceren' in de NRC, het bolwerk van hetgeen de hoogbejaarde Henk Hofland 'de politiek-literaire elite' kwalificeerde waar geen 'natie zonder [kan],' is een illustrerend voorbeeld van de wijze waarop het 'racisme' onder alle lagen van de Nederlandse bevolking doorgaat voor 'nuancering.' Allereerst dient men zich af te vragen of een witte nakomeling van een natie die historisch gezien haar rijkdom heeft gebaseerd op slavenhandel en kolonialisme anno 2015 de aangewezen figuur is om de zwarten in de VS bestraffend toe te spreken. Bovendien woont Charles Groenhuijsen niet voor niets in het uitgesproken witte bastion Bethesda, in de staat Maryland, waar de 'racial makeup' voor '85.86% White,' is en slechts '2.67% Black or African American,' en waar hij met zijn witte echtgenote en zijn drie, naar ik aanneem, al even witte kinderen volstrekt geïsoleerd leeft van de armoede als gevolg van de 'unemployment rate for African Americans' die zomer 2015 'nearly twice the national average and more than double the unemployment rate for whites last month, according to new jobs data released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Bethesda, Maryland. 'One Destination' voor de geprivilegieerde witte man en vrouw. 'A World of Excitement.'
The Black Ghetto.
Vanuit die geprivilegieerde positie is het vanzelfsprekend niet moeilijk om te schrijven:
ik wil als goedwillende blanke niet langer de schuld krijgen voor iets wat twee eeuwen geleden gebeurde.
Te veel zwarten zeggen: het is de schuld van blanken en hun racistische machtssysteem. We krijgen geen eerlijke kans en worden overal gediscrimineerd. De herinnering aan slavernij moeten we juist levend houden.
De eerste bewering toont al meteen haarscherp aan hoe geïsoleerd Groenhuijsen in zijn witte enclave nabij Washington leeft. De slavernij in de VS werd officieel 150 jaar geleden, in 1865, afgeschaft, vier jaar nadat Rusland het lijfeigenschap had beeïndigd. Dat wil niet zeggen dat daarmee de op 'racisme' gefundeerde discriminatie in de VS was verdwenen. Integendeel zelfs. Mijn collega Groenhuijsen had zijn sociaal isolement kunnen doorbreken wanneer hij zijn huiswerk had gedaan. Wikipedia meldt het volgende:
Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Enacted after the Reconstruction period, these laws continued in force until 1965. They mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities in states of the former Confederate States of America, starting in 1890 with a "separate but equal" status for African Americans. Conditions for African Americans were consistently inferior and underfunded compared to those available to white Americans. This body of law institutionalized a number of economic, educational, and social disadvantages. De jure segregation mainly applied to the Southern United States, while Northern segregation was generally de facto — patterns of housing segregation enforced by private covenants, bank lending practices, and job discrimination, including discriminatory labor union practices.
Jim Crow laws mandated the segregation of public schools, public places, and public transportation, and the segregation of restrooms, restaurants, and drinking fountains for whites and blacks. The U.S. military was also segregated, as were federal workplaces, initiated in 1913 under President Woodrow Wilson, the first Southern president elected since 1856. By requiring candidates to submit photos, his administration practiced racial discrimination in hiring.
These Jim Crow laws followed the 1800–1866 Black Codes, which had previously restricted the civil rights and civil liberties of African Americans. Segregation of public (state-sponsored) schools was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education. Generally, the remaining Jim Crow laws were overruled by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but years of action and court challenges were needed to unravel numerous means of institutional discrimination.
| Fotoboek In mijn fotoboek heb ik een verzameling foto's van onder andere mijn ontmoetingen met bekende mensen en wat foto's van mijn werk en werkplekken. |
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Ik sta op podium met Wim Beltman vz van de Sales Management Association - SMA
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Ik zit aan tafel met Amerikaanse sales-guru Gary Kunath en zijn vrouw Jodi.
't Was op 11/2 in Huis ter Duin Noordwijk op "Het Sales Event - 2009".
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 | Hillary Clinton en Edward Kennedy tijdens besloten bijeenkomst |
 | Hillary Clinton en Edward Kennedy tijdens besloten bijeenkomst |
 | Interview Bill Clinton, voorjaar 2005 |
 | Met minister Colin Powell, april 2003 |
 | Met Ronald Reagan, 1987 |
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Charles Groenhuijsen's blank 'Amerika.'
Kortom, de 'beste correspondent' van het NOS Journaal aller tijden, die het leven in de VS 'ja, zelfs voelbaar' weet te 'maken' voor 'de Nederlandse kijker,' en die suggereert dat het schreeuwend onrecht tegenover Afro-Amerikanen 'iets' is 'wat twee eeuwen geleden gebeurde,' geeft een verkeerde voorstelling van zaken. Als mijn collega de 2095 pagina's tellende Encyclopedia of the American and African American Experience (1999) zou hebben geraadpleegd, dan had hij geweten dat nog in 1940 slechts 'o,4 procent' van de stemgerechtigde Afro-Amerikaanse bevolking in Alabama was 'geregistreerd,' terwijl een jaar na de geboorte van Bill Clinton in Hope, Arkansas, nog geen één op de zes zwarten in die staat mocht stemmen. Toen Clinton in 1982 werd herkozen als gouverneur van Arkansas was nog steeds één op drie zwarte stemgerechtigden niet 'geregistreerd.' Het 'examen' om te kunnen stemmen was decennialang absurd. Aspirant-kiezers moesten in zuidelijke staten antwoord geven op vragen als in sommige gevallen: hoeveel knikkers zitten in deze glazen pot? Als men mis gokte mocht niet worden gestemd. Het resultaat was dat nog in 1960, toen Charles Groenhuijsen al zestien jaar was, maar '5,2 procent' van de zwarte bevolking in Mississippi mocht stemmen. Tijdens de Congresverkiezingen van 1990, negen jaar voordat Charles geprezen werd vanwege zijn vermogen om 'allerlei aspecten van de VS, van de structuur van het staatsbestel tot en met de aard van het dagelijkse leven op straat en in de supermarkt, voor de Nederlandse kijker begrijpelijk,' te maken, kwam slechts '39,2 procent' van de zwarte stemgerechtigden in de zuidelijke staten in aanmerking om te kiezen. Maar dit verzwijgt Groenhuijsen omdat hij domweg de werkelijkheid niet kent, en er vanuit Bethesda ook niet in geïnteresseerd is. Desondanks, of beter nog, juist daarom kon hij in verkozen worden tot 'Beste Correspondent.' Deze Hollandse 'top-journalist' stelt vandaag de dag op een demagogische manier in de krant, die zich jarenlang afficheerde als 'de slijpsteen van de geest,' dat
je geen meisjes van zestien zwanger [hoeft] te maken omdat je grootmoeder nog achter in de bus zat. Je hoeft geen mede-zwarten dood te schieten omdat er ooit slavernij was. Een slechte buurt is voor een opgroeiend kind een kolossaal nadeel, maar geen excuus om je school niet af te maken en stelend rond te gaan.
Klinkt dit ongenuanceerd? Luister naar Obama die voor een zaal van net afgestudeerde zwarte studenten over de arbeidsmarkt spreekt. Er is steeds meer concurrentie van super gemotiveerde sollicitanten uit China, India en Brazilië. Obama: 'We kunnen de erfenis van slavernij, racisme en discriminatie niet langer als excuus gebruiken. Je krijgt niks wat je niet zelf verdiend hebt. Het kan niemand wat schelen hoe je opvoeding was of dat je geleden hebt onder discriminatie.'
Zwart Amerika moet naar zichzelf willen kijken. In de demonstraties na de dodelijke incidenten met de politie was de gevleugelde kreet ‘Black Lives Matter!’ Natuurlijk zijn zwarte levens van waarde. Maar waarom vermoorden zwarte Amerikanen elkaar dan zo vaak (meer dan veertig doden per week)? Het aantal moordenaars onder African Americans is vergeleken met blanken zeven keer zo hoog. Geldt de strijdkreet van de demonstranten dan niet? Waarom staat geen zwarte leider op die bij elk zwart moordslachtoffer roept: ‘Yes, all black lives matter’?
Zo, de 'nuance' van de stereotypering is overtuigend genoeg, moet mijn collega hebben gedacht. Maar klopt zijn retoriek wel? Nee, geenszins, niet alleen omdat Groenhuijsen feiten verzwijgt en onjuist beweringen verspreidt, maar ook omdat een serieuze context ontbreekt, te weten: de historische zowel als actuele achtergrond. Zo wordt zijn stellige uitspraak demagogisch geformuleerd in de retorische vraag: 'Waarom staat geen zwarte leider op die bij elk zwart moordslachtoffer roept: ‘Yes, all black lives matter’?' In werkelijkheid zijn er tientallen voorbeelden te geven van een 'zwarte leider' die publiekelijk laat weten 'Yes, all black lives matter.’ Laat ik het meest recente voorbeeld geven. Gisteravond, dinsdagavond 9 september 2015, luisterde ik via National Public Radio naar een interview met de zwarte geestelijke Corey Brooks uit de beruchte Southside van Chicago die al jarenlang oproept om het zwarte geweld daar te stoppen.
Over the long holiday weekend, eight people were killed and another 46 were wounded in gun violence across Chicago, including in neighborhoods that don’t usually see crime of that kind. Pastor Corey Brooks tells Here & Now’s Meghna Chakrabarti that a lack of opportunity is one of the reasons why the violence is spreading and why more young people are turning to gangs, guns and violence. Brooks is known as the 'rooftop pastor' because he once slept for three months on the roof of a shutdown hotel to protest gun violence.
Maar omdat deze werkelijkheid niet past in Groenhuijsen's rascistische voorstelling van zaken verzwijgt hij niet alleen de feiten, maar verdraait hij de realiteit 180 graden. En waarom? Wel, zelf zegt hij daarover:
ik wil als goedwillende blanke niet langer de schuld krijgen voor iets wat twee eeuwen geleden gebeurde.
Eén van de trucs die Groenhuijsen gebruikt is dat hij de maatschappelijke werkelijkheid dood zwijgt, en de misdaad terugbrengt tot een geïsoleerd probleem van het individu. Vandaar dat hij maar al te graag de door de blanke neoliberale elite naar voren geschoven president Barack Obama citeert, die overigens een half witte/half zwarte Amerikaan is, maar die desondanks alle Afro-Amerikanen lijkt aan te spreken wanneer hij beweert dat
We de erfenis van slavernij, racisme en discriminatie niet langer als excuus [kunnen] gebruiken. Je krijgt niks wat je niet zelf verdiend hebt. Het kan niemand wat schelen hoe je opvoeding was of dat je geleden hebt onder discriminatie.
Hoog tijd voor de officiële cijfers over 'a lack of opportunity' dat 'one of the reasons' is 'why the violence is spreading and why more young people are turning to gangs, guns and violence.' Tegenover de goed geïnformeerde Chuck Mertz van het radioprogramma This is Hell! verklaarde de zwarte wetenschappelijke onderzoekster Janelle Jones dat de Amerikaanse werknemers sinds de jaren zeventig ervoor gezorgd hebben dat de neoliberale elite tenminste 70 procent rijker is geworden door vooral de stijging van de arbeidsproductiviteit, maar dat dit ten koste is gegaan van de werkgelegenheid van ook de zwarte bevolking, die al een achterstand had. 'We have created an enormous amount of wealth,' aldus Jones, maar al dat geld verdween in de zakken van de plutocratie die in de VS de macht in handen heeft. Sinds het eind van de jaren zeventig is het reëel besteedbare gemiddelde inkomen niet gestegen. This is Hell kondigde Janelle Jones als volgt aan:
Center for Economic Policy Research‘s research associate Janelle Jones discusses the study she co-authored, 'Has Education Paid Off for Black Workers?' The study argues, 'Over the past three decades, the ''human capital'' of the employed black workforce has increased enormously. Over the same period, the share of black workers with less than a high school degree fell from almost one-third to only about one in 20. The black workforce has also grown considerably older. Economists expect that increases in education and work experience will increase workers’ productivity and translate into higher compensation. But, the share of black workers in a ''good job'' – one that pays at least $19 per hour (in inflation-adjusted 2011 dollars), has employer-provided health insurance, and an employer-sponsored retirement plan – has actually declined.' This paper 'looks at this trend and policies that would have a large, positive impact on the quality of jobs for black workers.' Janelle co-wrote this work with past This is Hell! guest and CEPR chief economist John Schmitt.
Ik citeer uit haar studie:
Over the past three decades, the educational attainment of the employed black workforce has increased enormously. In 1979, 31.6 percent of black workers had less than a high school degree and only 10.4 percent had a four-year college degree or more. By 2011, only 5.3 percent had not completed high school and more than 26.2 percent had a college education or more. Over the same period, the black workforce also grew considerably older.1 In 1979, the median black worker was 33 years old; today, the median is 39.
Economists expect that increases in education and work experience will increase workers' productivity and translate into higher compensation. In this report, however, we document that the dramatic increase in the educational attainment of black workers, coupled with a large increase in their median age, has coincided with a decrease in the share of black workers holding what we define as a 'good job' (one that pays at least $19 per hour, has employer-provided health insurance, and some form of retirement plan). Over this period, black men saw a particularly sharp drop in job quality. At the same time, the share of black women in good jobs managed to rise, but black women started and ended the period with a lower rate of good jobs than black men, despite surpassing black men's educational attainment.
The lack of a payoff to rising educational attainment and age is not unique to black workers. As we've documented elsewhere, over the same period the overall workforce experienced similar increases in educational attainment and age but also saw the share of good jobs decline. Black workers, however, have consistently trailed white workers by large margins, even when the comparison is limited to workers with the same gender, age, and educational attainment.
Over the last many decades, black workers have made significant – and often overlooked – investments in education. Nevertheless, black workers have little to show for these investments. A lack of 'human capital' does not appear to be causing the difficulties black workers face in the labor market. The factors that lie behind the poor outcomes for black workers include ongoing labor-market discrimination,3 but also the same long-term, policy-driven deterioration in bargaining power experienced by low- and middle-wage workers in general. The key elements of this decline in bargaining power include: a fall in the inflation-adjusted value of the federal minimum wage; a sharp drop in the unionization rate in the private sector; the privatization of many state and local government functions; the deregulation of many well-paid industries such as trucking, airlines, and telecommunications; a fall-off in the enforcement of existing labor standards; trade deals that placed low- and middle-wage workers in direct competition with foreign workers; a dysfunctional immigration policy that pits immigrant workers with no rights against US-born workers with few rights; and macroeconomic policy that has kept the unemployment rate well above full employment for most of the last four decades. Black workers are disproportionately among the low- and middle-wage workers that have been most negatively affected by these policies. Our analysis suggests that these political factors together with ongoing racial discrimination – not a failure to invest in 'human capital' – explain the stagnation and decline in black labor-market outcomes since the end of the 1970s.
Conclusion
Black workers are much better educated today than they were three decades ago. They are also, on average, about six years older than they were at the end of the 1970s. Economic theory suggests that an older, better-educated workforce should fare better in the labor market. Nevertheless, black workers, as a whole, are actually less likely to be in a good job today than they were at the end of the 1970s. The deterioration over time in the labor-market outcomes hold for workers at every age and education level, including those with a four-year college degree or more.
Black women did see important increases in good jobs, but these gains were more than offset by declines for men. Black women's progress still left them with lower rates of good jobs than men, results that hold for every age and education group we examine.
Of the three components of our good jobs measure – earnings, health insurance, and retirement plan – only the share of black workers at or above the earnings threshold has increased since the late 1970s. The share of workers with employer-provided health insurance and employer-sponsored retirement plans both fell.
Our estimates suggest that without the strong educational upgrading of the black workforce that did take place, the good-jobs rate for black workers would have fallen from the actual 1979 rate of 20.8 to only 10.3 percent in 2011. Only the large-scale educational upgrading undertaken by black workers managed to keep the fall in the good-jobs rate to one percentage point (a 19.6 percent rate in 2011). If the economy had sustained through 2011 the same capacity to generate good jobs that it had in 1979, the educational and experience upgrading of the workforce that took place over the last three decades would have pushed the good jobs rate up to 31.2 percent.
Our policy simulations show that universal policies such as universal health insurance and a universal pension plan (over and above Social Security) have, by far, the biggest impact on creating good jobs and eliminating bad jobs for black workers. Universal health insurance and retirement plans implemented simultaneously have a larger impact than each plan implemented separately.
The simulations also suggest that for the overall black workforce, an increase in the unionization rate would create more good jobs, and eliminate more bad jobs, than a comparably sized increase in college attainment. Since creating a higher union share is likely to be cheaper and faster than creating more black college graduates, these findings suggest the importance of emphasizing union organizing alongside the push for higher college completion rates.
Dit is de maatschappelijke werkelijkheid in de VS die volstrekt ontgaat. Deels omdat hij te lui is om zijn vak serieus uit te oefenen en deels omdat hij als racist geen behoefte heeft aan deze informatie. In verband met de lengte stop ik vandaag. Volgende keer meer over het verhulde, onderhuidse racisme in Nederland, het racisme van Henk Hofland, Geert Mak en andere vooraanstaande opiniemakers van de polder.
U moet wel flink in de geldbuidel tasten, maar dan heeft u ook het neusje van de zalm, keurig verpakt racisme.
Charles Groenhuijsen is een veel gevraagde spreker en voorzitter. Hij bestrijkt in het Nederlands en Engels een breed scala aan onderwerpen ontleend aan zijn 33 jaar in de journalistiek en natuurlijk aan zijn boeken over VS en Nederland.
Met zijn opdrachtgevers werkt Groenhuijsen inhoudelijk aan een passend concept voor een inspirerende en uitdagende speech. De ene keer voor een exclusief gezelschap van 15 corporate managers, een andere keer voor een theaterzaal vol vermogende particulieren, beginnende ondernemers of klanten van een grote bank.
Hij is een veel gevraagde gast op scholen, in boekwinkels en bibliotheken waar hij over zijn boeken vertelt en graag in discussie gaat met zijn publiek.
Hij is een veel gevraagde gast op scholen, in boekwinkels en bibliotheken waar hij over zijn boeken vertelt en graag in discussie gaat met zijn publiek.
Onderwerpen die Charles Groenhuijsen recent behandelde:
- verschillen tussen Nederland en de VS (zakendoen, cultureel, onderwijs, economie, politiek),
- globalisering,
- arbeidsmarkt (nationaal en internationaal),
- George Bush en
- de Irak-oorlog
- Nieuwe lezingen en mogelijkheden, over o.a. robots, drones, 3D printing en Social Media staan op de agenda.
Als dagvoorzitter heeft Groenhuijsen ook zeer uiteenlopende onderwerpen behandeld:
marketing en sales, internationaal betalingsverkeer, multinationale investeringen, de veranderingen op de Nederlandse huizen- en hypotheekmarkt, diversity in personeelsbeleid, internationaal voetbal, beveiliging internationaal transport, de uitdagingen van Internet, verzekeringen en tussenpersonen, VOIP-telefonie, internet-bankieren, provinciaal economiebeleid.
Ik heb het uit 2003 daterende Dagboek van Charles Groenhuijsen Oorlog in Irak nog eens door gebladerd, en ja hoor, de propaganda spat er vanaf.
Een citaat op de laatste bladzijde is kenmerkend, waarbij Charles ons waarschuwt dat
we niet [mogen] vergeten waar het in deze oorlog ook om ging: Het lot van de meer dan twintig miljoen Irakezen... De Irakezen hoeven niet meer bang te zijn voor de fatale klop op de deur, een dodelijk schot in het donker of de onverhoede arrestatie in de nacht.
En daarom concludeert Charles namens alle Irakezen dat hij en zij
[beter] dan wie ook de betekenis [begrijpen] van de optimistische naam van deze oorlog: Operation Iraqi Freedom,
aldus luiden de laatste woorden van de trotse winnaar van de Professor Herman Wekker Prijs.
Feiten anno 2010: meer dan 1,3 miljoen Irakese burgers zijn om het leven gekomen als gevolg van de illegale 'Operation Iraqi Freedom,' meer dan 2,5 miljoen Irakese burgers zijn hun woonplaats ontvlucht, en Irak is veranderd in etnisch gezuiverde regio's waar de chaos totaal is. Ondertussen hebben deze feiten de positie van de westerse opiniemakers geenszins aangetast. Hun propaganda was voor henzelf consequentieloos. Groenhuijsen werd naderhand door het NOS-Journaal zelfs gevraagd om nationale nieuwsvoorlezer te worden. Het illustreert andermaal hoe weinig journalistieke criteria een rol spelen bij de mainstream media.
Desondanks of beter nog, juist daarom kost een spreekbeurt van Charles Groenhuijsen tussen de 5000 en 7500 euro, als u hem inhuurt bij de Speakers Academy. Dit is wel exclusief zijn vliegtuigticket naar Nederland, hotelkosten, taxi, maaltijden etc. Maar dan weet u ook zeker dat u een echte praatjesmaker in huis hebt gehaald die honderduit kwekt. Het toont maar weer eens hoe een klein land toch groot kan zijn.
While Russian opinion polls in support of President Putin now has reached a record level of 89%, he is simultaneously target of a smear campaign in the West. Putin, we are told, is a power-hungry dictator intending to restore the Soviet Empire. He is portrayed as a danger to world peace, a dictator with a background as a KGB officer, who controls ”communist” Russia with an iron fist.
What is called ”Putin’s annexation of Crimea” is taken as an example of his aggressiveness. The fact that Crimea has been a province of Russia since 1758 is not mentioned in Western media. Khrushchev handed over Crimea to Ukraine at a time when both were part of the Soviet Union and the whole thing was purely administrative.
Russia has for 250 years had its Black Sea fleet based in Crimea, and a leasing agreement with Ukraine gave them the right to have 25,000 troops there. After the so called ”annexation” Crimean streets were full of jubilant inhabitants who had again become Russian citizens. Not a single shot was fired, and a referendum showed that 96% of the people wanted to return to Russia.
This is not surprising because seventy percent of the Crimeans have relatives in Russia, and forty percent of Russians have relatives in Crimea. Despite the fact that reports from the OSCE confirmed that the poll followed all rules for referendums western media claimed that it was illegal and rejected it as propaganda. Informed observers know that the annexation was nothing more than Crimea’s reconnection with the motherland.
Ex-president Jimmy Carter said that:
”It was something that Crimean residents wanted.”
Even anti-Russian Forbes Magazine wrote:
”One year after annexation locals prefer Moscow before Kiev.”
Putin in the Western media and the coup in Kiev
However, western media have kept silent about this and argues with the persistence of a fool that Russia has conquered Crimea militarily, and therefore should be sanctioned.
The western elite wants to keep the public unaware that the United States was behind the coup in Kiev and the US Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland appointed the Ukrainian Government not the Ukrainian people. Her discussion with the US ambassador to Ukraine about who they would put in the government has been leaked and is available to listen to on the Internet (1).
The US invested 5 billion USD in Ukraine to support ”democracy-building” (a more correct term would be “subversion-building”) to so called non-profit organizations (2). If the coup had succeeded, it would have deprived Russia of its military base in the Crimea, and locked Russia out from the Black Sea and the Mediterranean.
All of a sudden the Ukraine people found themselves facing a government with strong Nazi elements whose first decision was to ban the Russian language! Their hatred for everything Russian has resulted in a genocide in eastern Ukraine, where the military indiscriminately murders the Russian-speaking population including children and elderly.
At least 5,000 civilian Russian-speaking Ukrainians have been murdered and a couple of million have fled, most of them to Russia (3). Crimea’s reconnection to Russia has saved its people from a similar fate.
Nazi groups such as Svoboda and the Azov Battalion are driving forces, but Western media still denies the existence of Nazism in the country. A US bill to congress suggests otherwise saying:
”Nazi groups in Ukraine will no longer be supported.”
However, this has been silenced, and western media continue to assert that Russia is in war with the Russian population in Ukraine, which is extremely absurd but apparently the best they could come up with; who else would shell the Donetsk civilians?
The only measure Russia has taken is sending caravans of trucks with food and medicine to the badly affected population, whose pensions and social support has been taken from them by their own government. However, the US, Canada and other NATO countries have sent both weapons (which Obama has allegedly stopped but that George Friedman of the Stratfor think tank says is happening) and military personnel to them.
Washington’s Responsibility
The reason for the coup, which forced the democratically elected President Yanukovych to escape, was definitely not more democracy for Ukraine’s people, but had political causes that can be traced back to a single one, namely the US global hegemony that does not allow any other country to challenge them.
The Wolfowitz doctrine spells out the US foreign policy strategy;
Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power. These regions include Western Europe, East Asia, the territory of the former Soviet Union, and Southwest Asia.
In other words Washington’s primary goal is not peace, not prosperity, not human rights, not democracy, not justice. Washington’s primary goal is to remain the only superpower in the world. (4)
If war is necessary to defend this, the world will have to accept it! A well-functioning cooperation between Germany and Russia is, according to presidential advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, the only power formation that could threaten US hegemony. To drive a wedge into the cooperation between them, was an obvious reason for the coup in Ukraine.
Another thing was that Russia does not support the World Government under control of the financial elite, which they have been planning for a long time and which is now being slipped into western countries, without the citizens being aware of it.
Putin shocked the elite when he commented on the world government issue (he used the wordsunipolar world), in a speech in Munich in 2007, where he said:
. . . what is a unipolar world? However one might embellish this term, at the end of the day it refers to one type of situation, namely one centre of authority, one centre of force, one centre of decision-making.It is a world in which there is one master, one sovereign. And at the end of the day this is pernicious not only for all those within this system, but also for the sovereign itself because it destroys itself from within.And this certainly has nothing in common with democracy. Because, as you know, democracy is the power of the majority in light of the interests and opinions of the minority.Incidentally, Russia – we – are constantly being taught about democracy. But for some reason those who teach us do not want to learn themselves.I consider that the unipolar model is not only unacceptable but also impossible in today’s world.
After this statement the campaign against Putin has intensified.
End of Democracy
The role democracy will play in the planned world government is clearly revealed by David Rockefeller when he thanked a select group of media invited to share its planning.
It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supernational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national autodetermination practiced in past centuries.
In other words, the world has to look forward to the bankers’ dictatorship! Democracy is over! This applies also to Sweden, where the removal of cash is a first step making us completely dependent of the banks’ greed and unpredictability. This means that during a power outage, we will have no money at all! During a power outage for two months – which can be arranged – we will have difficulty even surviving. The elite claims the world is overpopulated and its intention is to reduce world population from the present seven billion to 500 million, and this may be one tool in their effort to kill off 6,5 billion people – the biggest genocide ever!
Putins Achievements
The American Sharon Tennison (5) began already during the Soviet era to arrange journeys for Americans to Russia, her private initiative to reduce tension in the world. She has closely followed the change ever since:
It is astounding to me how much progress Russia has made in the past 14 years since an unknown man with no experience walked into Russia’s presidency and took over a country that was flat on its belly. . . During this time, I’ve traveled throughout Russia several times every year, and have watched the country slowly change under Putin’s watch. Taxes were lowered, inflation lessened, and laws slowly put in place. Schools and hospitals began improving. Small businesses were growing, agriculture was showing improvement, and stores were becoming stocked with food.
It shouldn’t be surprising that Putin is loved by the Russians, but hated by those who want to remove him from power. He has the nerve to act as an exceptionally skillful head of state who works for the best of his country and people, something that every politician should do, but which still few countries can enjoy.
MH17
A year ago a passenger plane from Malaysia Airlines was shot down over the Ukrainian war zone. Western media immediately accused Russia. Dr. Paul Craig Roberts (6) says about this in an interview:
I think they intended for the airliner to be shot down. The latest evidence is that it was shot down by air, by a Ukrainian jet fighter using a missile. This is the best evidence we have at this time. What is suspicious about this is that the instant that the airliner was reported to have been shot down, the entirety of the Western media was already programmed to blame Russia. Before there was any evidence, before there was any explanation, we had all of the Western media blaming Russia – even the BBC, which used to be a respectable news organization. So this suggests the whole thing was preplanned.And if you look at the development of this we see that Ukraine has not released any information about its contacts with the airliner. And we see that Washington, which had a spy satellite directly over the area at the time, refuses to release its information. So the only information we have comes from the Russians, and the Russians say that if this had happened on a ground-to-air missile, this Buk system, that their radar in Rostov would have picked it up and yet it shows no such happening.So I think the reason that we can’t get to the bottom of this is that it’s been used against Russia by Washington in order to break off Russia’s relationships with Europe. It’s the foundation of the sanctions and it’s part of Washington trying to break up the political and economic relationships between Russia and Europe. In my opinion, all the evidence we have, as of this time, supports no other conclusion. . .So that’s really what it’s all about and shooting down an airliner for Washington this doesn’t mean anything; they kill more people than that while we are talking, in Yemen, Pakistan, Iraq, in wherever. For 14 years the US has been killing people all over the Middle East and Africa and why are they so worried about a couple of hundred on an airliner, they kill that many every hour.So the whole thing is directed to demonize Russia in order to force Europe to comply with Washington’s will, which is: “We have to stop the rise of Russia, we can’t have another independent power, we are the uni-power, we have hegemony over the world, we must not permit other countries to be able to block us in any way.” That’s what it’s all about.
Why has the Dutch crash report not been published?
- Could it be that it does not show what Russia has been accused of ever since the crash?
- Is it perhaps that Washington now wants to refer the whole case to a UN commission which they can control and let them judge that Russia is the perpetrator, without having to bother about the facts of the final crash report?
References
[6] Paul Craig Roberts previously associated with Reagan also was an editor of the Wall Street Journal. Roberts worked for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Fortune, London Times and The Financial Times. He has also been giving several lectures at universities.
Hundreds of civilians killed in US-led air strikes on Isis targets – report
Airwars project details ‘credible reports’ of at least 459 non-combatant deaths, including 100 children, in 52 air strikes
The air campaign against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has killed more than 450 civilians, according to a new report, even though the US-led coalition has so far acknowledged just two non-combatant deaths.
More than 5,700 air strikes have been launched in the campaign, which nears its first anniversary this Saturday, with its impact on civilians largely unknown.
Now Airwars, a project by a team of independent journalists, is publishing details of 52 strikes with what it believes are credible reports of at least 459 non-combatant deaths, including those of more than 100 children.
It says there is a “worrying gulf between public and coalition positions” on the campaign’s toll on civilians.
To date the US Central Command (Centcom), the lead force in the campaign, has published one official investigation – a report in May that found two children were killed in a November 2014 strike in Syria.
The coalition’s lead commander, Lt Gen John Hesterman, has called the campaign “the most precise and disciplined in the history of aerial warfare”.
But Airwars project leader Chris Woods told the Guardian: “The emphasis on precision in our view hasn’t been borne out by facts on the ground.”
Since May, Centcom has conducted investigations into three further strikes, which found claims of civilian deaths were “unfounded”.
One of the attacks investigated was on Fadhiliya, Iraq, on 4 April. When the Guardian investigated this strike in May, witnesses and local politicians said a family of five had died, including a pregnant woman and an eight-year-old girl.
Centcom told Airwars it would only publish investigations with a “preponderance of evidence” of civilian deaths. It is understood to be examining six further incidents.
Sahr Muhamadally, from the Center for Civilians in Conflict, said: “All allegations of civilian harm, including from open sources, should be investigated by the coalition and processes should be in place to acknowledge and assist those harmed.”
International NGOs point out that coalition air strikes are significantly safer for civilians than those carried out by either the Assad regime or the Iraqi military.
However, over six months, Airwars examined 118 air strikes and identified 52 that Woods said “warrant urgent investigation”. Airwars believes there are strong indications of civilian deaths, according to multiple, reliable sources, from these attacks.
Airwars used international and local news reports in Arabic and English, social media postings including photos and videos, and the findings of monitoring groups on the ground. They cross-referenced these with coalition military reports.
The ongoing violence means that on-the-ground verification is all but impossible. But the conflict does not take place in an information vacuum: local people are often quick to post videos and photos on Twitter and YouTube, and to create martyrdom pages on Facebook.
In Syria, the long civil war has seen groups spring up to record atrocities of all kinds, who often funnel news to colleagues outside the country.
Making things more complicated, emotive footage or reports of civilian deaths are used for propaganda by all sides of the chaotic war. In three cases, Airwars found evidence that it believes disproves claims of civilian deaths, for example by unearthing online videos that show that supposed non-combatants were active Isis members.
The bloodiest was a 3 June air strike on a suspected IED [improvised explosive device] factory and storage facility in Hawija, Iraq. Videos and photos posted online after the bombing show a landscape of destroyed buildings and mangled metal. Local people told al-Jazeera and Reuters that over 70 civilians were killed.
In a press briefing shortly after the strike, Hesterman said the coalition used a “fairly small weapon on a known IED building in an industrial area”, but that this had hit a “massive amount of Daesh [Isis] high explosives”.
He added: “If there are unintended injuries, that responsibility rests squarely on Daesh.”
Centcom has since announced a formal investigation after receiving “credible” evidence of civilian deaths.
In Syria, the worst incidents include a 28 December air strike on an Isis facility in Al Bab that was being used as a temporary prison. Reports gathered by Airwars found that at least 58 prisoners – many of whom were being held for petty infractions of Isis’ rules, such as buying cigarettes – were killed. Local activists claimed that the use of the building as a prison was well known.
The coalition did not acknowledge the attack for nearly two weeks, after which it conceded, following repeated questions by news agency McClatchy, that it had conducted the strike.
Centcom spokesman Lt Co Kyle Raines said the coalition takes great care to avoid civilian deaths. “We take all allegations of civilian casualties seriously, and we apply very rigorous standards in our targeting process to avoid or to minimise civilian casualties in the first place,” he said.
The UK is the second-most active participant in the coalition, having launched almost 250 strikes in Iraq.
As Britain’s MPs prepare to vote this autumn on expanding UK air strikes from Iraq to Syria, Labour MP Tom Watson called for thorough official investigations into claims of civilian deaths to allow an “informed debate” about the campaign. He added: “The UK should be leading in the tracking, reporting of and response to allegations of civilian casualties.”
Former international development secretary Andrew Mitchell told the Guardian he was in favour of expanding British strikes into Syria. “But if it’s our common objective to win hearts and minds and split off the terrorist thugs from the related population, then we have to acknowledge that killing innocent civilians acts as a significant recruiting sergeant for the terrorists,” he said.
A Ministry of Defence spokeswoman said that the UK takes “every possible measure” to avoid civilian casualties. “We are not aware of any incidents of civilian casualties as a result of UK strike activity over Iraq,” she added.
Woods, from Airwars, said the US-led campaign’s focus on urban areas made civilian deaths unavoidable, despite “significant efforts” to avoid them. “What we are seeing in Iraq and Syria is the coalition is bombing where Isis is, and that’s in the cities … Unsurprisingly, that’s where we are tracking the highest number of civilian casualties.” The Isis stronghold of Mosul, Iraq, alone accounts for 40% of all civilian casualty reports in Airwars’ data.
Yazidis yearn for their Sinjar home one year after Isis forced them to fleeThe sheer pace of the strikes adds to the risk to civilians. Raines said that pre-planned missions made up approximately 10% of strikes.
The vast majority are on “emerging targets”. In these strikes the targeting process takes “anywhere from minutes to hours depending on collateral damage concerns, while maintaining careful consideration for each target to ensure we do our best to minimise civilian casualties and collateral damage,” Raines said.
Even the highest estimates of civilian deaths in international air strikes are dwarfed by numbers believed killed by Syrian regime barrel bombings and Iraqi government air strikes, and by armed groups including Isis and al Nusra Front.
But Woods said Airwars’ findings suggest that the coalition’s narrative of virtually no civilian casualties may not be true. “You can’t have an air war of this intensity without civilians getting killed or injured, but they need to be more transparent,” he said.
1 opmerking:
Kiespijn :)
Ik heb geen keus.
Evengoed bedankt voor het tijdelijk tolereren.
Even de pijn verdrijven.
Het is geen chatbox. bijvoorbeeld.
Terwijl, de telefooncel loopt over straat tegenwoordig. Men weet niet beter. Maar behoorlijk commentaar, ho maar. Je weet niet wat je mist.
Het zij zo. Haal maar weer weg zonder verklaring of argumenten, ik ben je domein binnen gedrongen. De regie overgenomen? Naar commentaar. Dat zal wel. Ik heb nog even maar ga het niet meer hier doen. Te vervelend.
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